Her forehead wrinkled. “That’s awful.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What if I remain mortal?”

He shrugged. “Dragos doesn’t appear to be running away because of that. Will you deny yourself a mate and the chance of happiness just because you’re gonna die someday?”

“That’s different. I’m going to die one way or another if I can’t change. It just seems terrible to think that Dragos would die because of me.”

He hunched his shoulders and watched his hands as he turned the scotch bottle in circles. “There aren’t any guarantees in life. Just because some of us are exceptionally long-lived and call ourselves ‘immortal’ doesn’t mean we can’t be killed. I would jump at the chance to have a mate, mortal or otherwise. Most of us would, you know. We never expected it to happen to Dragos, but I bet you every last one of us is thinking what a lucky son of a bitch he is.”

They fell silent again. Then she slid her hand over to touch the back of his. “Thank you, Gray. You’re a good listener and a wise man.”

He took her hand and pressed a kiss against her fingers. “Shh,” he whispered over her hand, eyes crinkling. “Don’t tell anybody.”

She smiled at him. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

She was tempted to change into gym clothes and spend an hour on a treadmill, but then tiredness swept over her. It had been another long day and the gryphons had already given her quite a workout before Dragos stopped them.

Over Graydon’s protests, she put the necklace back in the box, cleaned off the dining table, put the leftovers in the large stainless steel refrigerator and rinsed the dishes and stacked them in the dishwasher. Then she decided to wait for Dragos’s return in the library. Rune came to join them as she browsed through the volumes.

She greeted him, picked an early history of the Wyr and curled up to read in a large leather armchair. The chair was the most battered piece of furniture in the room, the dark brown leather buttery-soft and bearing a faint but unmistakable familiar masculine scent. She could just imagine Dragos relaxing in this seat as he read his scientific journals. Rune and Graydon respected her unspoken desire for privacy and settled across the room to play chess.

After a while she let the book rest on her chest as she closed her eyes.

A gentle touch on her shoulder woke her. Rune squatted by her armchair, his eyes kind. She sagged back in the chair and yawned. “Time’s it?”

“After two,” he said. “You look beat. Why don’t you go to bed? Better yet, Dragos said he’d stay in telepathic range. You could call him back if you wanted.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to do that. He needed some space. He’s had a tough day. And I don’t want to go to bed without him.” Her eyes started to drift closed and she forced them open. “Unless you guys need to go to bed?”

He smiled. “We’re up until he gets back. Don’t worry about us; we’re fine.”

She nodded and felt soft warmth as he tucked a cashmere throw blanket around her. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Pia.”

He walked back to the chess table and Graydon. She closed her eyes again. Soon she was walking in a very old forest, breathing in its fresh loam scent. A small, pearly, luminescent dragon lay draped around her shoulders like a stole. She stroked a graceful sinuous leg, and the dragon lifted up his head to look at her with beautiful, dark violet blue eyes. She was full of emotion as she looked into his wide-open innocent gaze.

I love you, said the little dragon.

She kissed his delicate snout. I love you too, peanut.

She came full awake with a start and sat up, looking around. For a moment she felt disoriented and abandoned as she put her hand to her empty throat and shoulders.

Graydon and Rune watched her from across the room. Both men were wide-awake and alert. Graydon said, “What is it?”

She shook her head. “Just a dream.”

They stood. “What kind of dream?” Rune asked, eyes sharp.

She frowned at them, not wanting to share it. “Nothing happened. It was just a dream.”

They both looked toward the ceiling. “Dragos is back,” Graydon told her. “He’ll be right here.”

“Okay,” she said, hurt that Dragos hadn’t reached out to her telepathically and determined not to let it matter. Now was not the time to develop a thin skin. In fact, as long as she remained in the Tower she ought to jettison any delicate sensibilities she might have altogether.

Dragos entered and the atmosphere in the room turned electric. He looked invigorated. He glanced at the gryphons and jerked his chin toward the door, and they slipped out as he strode over and squatted in front of the armchair. She gave him a tentative smile as he leaned his forearms on the chair’s arms and regarded her. His gaze was moody, his mouth tight.

“It’s almost four A.M.,” he said. “If you wanted to avoid my bed that much, you should have crashed in one of the other rooms.”

Her smile vanished. She struggled to sit upright and pull the jewelry box out from under the open book. She threw the box at him. Impossible to miss at point-blank range. It smacked him in the chest.

“I was waiting up to thank you for the gift,” she snapped. “That you, oh, by the way, didn’t give me yourself. Move.”

He stayed crouched in front of her, eyes narrowed.

She stuck her face up to his, giving him a full-on glare. She bared her teeth. “I said move out of my way.”

He snatched her against his chest and drove his mouth down on hers. She struggled, managed to get one arm free and smacked him on the shoulder. He grabbed her by the back of the head to hold her still as he devoured her. She mmphed against his mouth and gave him another, weaker smack. He wedged her lips open and drove his tongue in deep.

Damn him! She wound her free arm around his neck and kissed him back furiously. All the electricity in the room shot into her body in one thunderous strike.

After a moment he eased up, turned gentler. She sucked his lower lip between her teeth and bit him hard.

He jerked back, gold eyes flaring. He touched his lip, looked at the smear of blood on his fingers, and his face creased with laughter. He said, “You liked me kissing you.”

She didn’t try to deny it. “Well, there’s a whole lot happening over here besides that. I’ve got quite a bit of angry still going on. Not that you asked. Did you come in here looking to pick a fight? How do you expect me to trust you when you act like such a pig?”

He didn’t like that and glared at her. Struck by the strength and ferocity of the expression, she stared at him. If she were meeting him for the first time and he looked at her like that, she would be spinning on her heel and on the run before you could say Kentucky Derby. How things had changed.

His hold loosened on her. He eased back on his heels. She straightened and inspected the open book that had gotten crushed between them. Some of the pages had gotten creased. She smoothed them out and then set the book on a nearby table. All the while she was focused on him crouching too close in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her anger wasn’t so quick to die away just because he knew how to say the word “sorry.” But she didn’t want to start escalating things again, so she just nodded. Maybe waiting up to talk to him had been a mistake. She avoided his gaze as she folded the throw blanket and draped it over the arm of the chair.

“Pia.” She looked at him. He held the jewelry box out to her. “I have a present for you.”

The starch keeping her spine ramrod straight melted. Damn him again. “Do you?”

He opened the box and lifted out the necklace. Gold and rainbow fire glittered in his dark fingers and was reflected in the gleam of his eyes. “I wanted to see how the opals would look against your skin.”

“It’s a beautiful present,” she told him. “Thank you.”

“I’d like to put it on you.”

“All right,” she said.

She pulled her hair into a hand and held it aside as she twisted in the chair. His fingers worked at her nape, securing the clasp. Then the weight of the necklace settled into place around her neck, much heavier than the slim chains she was used to. It was longer than a choker and fell to the top of her br**sts. She looked down at it and touched one of the stones.

His fingers stroked the hollow at the base of her neck and trailed along her skin. “Lovely,” he whispered. He bent and angled his head to press a kiss against her throat. She stroked his black hair, her eyes half closed.

He drew back. The lines of strain were bracketing his mouth again. “Do you want to stay or not?”

“I’ll be honest with you,” she told him. “It’s hard to want to stay when you’re being impossible. But I don’t want to go.”

His gaze flared with something, triumph or relief, or maybe both. He started to pull her back into his arms.

“Wait.” She braced both hands on his chest. “I’m not done. I don’t see how we can finish this conversation until something else is concluded.”

“And what is that?” His eyes narrowed.

“I need to know for sure who and what I am. We both need to know. That’s got to come before anything else. You think you want me to stay, but what if you change your mind?” She put fingers over his mouth when he started to speak and said, “It doesn’t matter what you say right now, since this is actually about me. I won’t be able to trust things between us until I believe you know who I am. Hell, until I know who I am. I want you to help me try to change, please.”

He took hold of her hand and removed her fingers from his mouth. “Can I speak now?” he demanded.

He sounded mad again. She wondered if anyone had ever told him before that it didn’t matter what he said or thought. She licked dry lips and said, “Yes.”

“All right. You want to do this, we’ll do it right now.” He stood and pulled her to her feet.

“Now?” She looked at a nearby wall clock. “It’s four thirty in the morning.”

“The hell difference does that make? I’m not going to give you time to overanalyze things and chicken out. You napped, didn’t you?” He took her by the wrist and strode out the door.

“Well, yes.” She trotted to keep up with him. “Damn it, that’s another thing. You’ve got to stop dragging me around like a sack of potatoes.” It was always some kind of he-man issue with him.

He shifted his hold to lace his fingers through hers. “Better?”

“Maybe,” she grumbled.

He led her to the bedroom and into the dressing room. “You’re going to want to put on jeans and some shoes, maybe grab a sweater or jacket. There’s a pocket of Other land about fifteen minutes’ flight west of the city. I’ve used it before for this kind of thing. It’s not very big, but the magic is strong and steady.”

“Okay.” She walked into her closet and stopped. Nerves started to tie her insides up in knots.

Was she going to let him railroad her into doing this now?

Yes. Because he was right, she would overanalyze and she was already tempted to chicken out. It was hard enough to try on her own and fail to change. So much seemed to be on the line with this one.

Not giving herself a chance to think, she tore out of her skirt and hopped into a pair of jeans. She sat on the floor to tug on socks and her new running shoes, then grabbed a black zippered sweatshirt. Then she removed the opal necklace with care and laid it out on her dresser beside her small jewelry chest. She went into the bathroom to run her brush through her hair a couple of times, and she yanked the length back into a scrunchie.

Dragos appeared in the bathroom doorway. He had kept the jeans on and changed out of the Armani shirt, into another black T-shirt that molded to his muscled torso. He wore black boots and had a gun holstered at his waist and a sword strapped to his back.

She drew up short at the sight. “Oh-kay.”

“It’s just a precaution, Pia. We’re leaving the city,” he said. “We’re not going far, the gryphons are going with us, and we’ll still be well inside my demesne, but you’ve got to get used to this. Going out armed is a fact of life now.”

“Of course. It’s just another thing to get used to.” She looked at the holster. “A gun?”

“It’s for any trouble we might run into on this side of the passage. They’re safe enough to pack if you don’t fire them on the other side.”

She grimaced. “I guess I’ll adjust.”

“You’re doing more than fine with all this,” he told her. “I’m proud of you.”

She smiled at him as pleasure welled. She figured it was a measure of how far gone she was that his praise could affect her so. But she also suspected he didn’t offer praise lightly or often.

“All set?” he asked.

“Yes.” This time when he reached for her she was ready for him and took hold of his hand.

Bayne, Constantine, Graydon and Rune were armed and waiting for them when they went up to the roof. She looked from one to another. They were relaxed and alert and gave no hint that being called out before dawn was anything unusual. Graydon winked at her and she gave him an uncertain smile.

She hadn’t envisioned having quite such an audience when she tried to shift again. She struggled to not let it matter but the terrible sense of exposure from earlier that day came back, turning her nervousness to fear.

Dragos walked with her to the center of the roof. Some signal passed between the men that she didn’t catch. The four sentinels shifted into gryphons. She lost all sense of fear as wonder overcame her and she stared. They had the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. No drawing of a gryphon she had ever seen had quite managed to capture their strange majesty or fierce dignity. They were smaller than Dragos in his dragon form but still huge to her eyes, each one’s sleek muscled body the size of an SUV.